


Never Enough

by bailong05



Category: Xiaolin Showdown (Cartoon)
Genre: Autistic Jack Spicer, Canon Autistic Character, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 23:29:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17517887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bailong05/pseuds/bailong05
Summary: Chase Young contemplates his relationship with Jack Spicer.





	Never Enough

Chase didn’t quite know how he’d come to be in this position. Oh, he knew the circumstances which had led to this point, the things he had said and done to place himself in the situation he now found himself in, but… somewhere, something had happened he hadn’t anticipated. Hadn’t wanted.

And, of course, it all revolved around the one person in his life guaranteed to screw up all of his well-laid plans.

Jack Spicer.

The bumbling, clumsy fuck-up had grown up, gradually distancing himself from the conflict he’d once so eagerly attempted to take part in, until one day, several years after he’d first met the boy, he realized he hadn’t seen him in over a year. And, on a whim, he’d decided to see what he was up to, willing his scrying orb to show him the annoying menace that was Jack Spicer. He’d seen him in his work lab—not surprising—those ridiculous goggles covering his eyes as he soldered something together and suddenly seeming not so ridiculous anymore. His face was smeared with grease and oil and when he’d finished soldering and pulled back, pushing those goggles up into his hair to scrutinize his handywork, Chase was hit with the sudden hard, intense realization that he desired him.

At first he didn’t understand it. What could he possibly find desirable about Jack Spicer of all people? He’d watched him more, expecting to find something about him that would kill his desire as quickly as it came. He didn’t. There were, of course, things that he disliked about him—his rather disgusting eating habits, for one—but they were mostly things that could be corrected. There were more things about him that he liked—far more than he thought there would be. His intelligence was quite remarkable, something he had doubted up until he’d started watching him. His intelligence was so remarkable, in fact, that many things about Jack’s personality began to click into place.

His awkwardness. His lack of understanding of obvious social cues. His frequent and intense anxiety attacks and meltdowns. His attention problems.

Chase had lived for many, many years, but he was not in the habit of ignoring the world even if he mostly isolated himself from it. He knew how to recognize a disorder when he saw one, and now that he was looking at Jack—really looking at him—he recognized he had one. Jack was autistic.

He’d had to research it. He knew how to recognize the symptoms, but he didn’t know what it was, or if he wanted to do anything about his desire—which had only grown as he’d watched him—because of it. He hadn’t gotten a clear answer for either question.

The day he managed to catch him in the midst of changing settled the matter for him. Jack Spicer had grown into a beautiful body, and Chase had been unable to resist his desire. He’d stepped back into the genius’ life with his focus only on one thing: having that body in his bed. He had acquired that easily enough. He did not force him in his bed, of course—his honor code would not allow that—and he’d made certain to make it very, very clear that he was interested only in sex, refusing to truly begin the relationship until he was sure Jack understood that. He would have the boy—young man now—for as long as he kept his interest, and then they would part ways again.

He’d expected the relationship to last a matter of weeks, knowing going into it that it would require a lot of patience he doubted he would be willing to have for very long. But weeks had turned into months, and months had turned into a year. Then two. And now, three years to the day after he’d gone to claim Jack’s body for his own, he woke from his customary midday rest to find Jack sleeping peacefully next to him.

He shouldn’t be there. His midday rest had been for centuries a time for him to be well and truly alone, separated from the rest of the world with only his own thoughts to keep him company. In the beginning of his relationship with Jack it had remained that way, but somewhere along the line he had begun to share even that with him. They weren’t even in their room. They were in his private garden—another place Jack wasn’t supposed to be—lying on a daybed just big enough for both of them in a pagoda he’d constructed with his own hands just for Jack. It was no big deal for him to fall asleep in the sun, his magic and resistance to illness protected him from any damage the sun sought to deal him, but his albino lover had much more fragile skin and no magic to protect him. And Jack loved to lay in the garden with him.

They did not have sex; in fact he refused to have sex during his midday rest. They simply lay together, sometimes sleeping, sometimes not. Today he had slept, but not for long. He’d spent the rest of the time watching his lover sleep. He liked doing that, watching Jack sleep. It was the only time he ever had a chance of being quiet and still as he was now, although even in sleep that chance was low. He did not mind Jack’s hyperactivity and low attention span as much as he’d thought he would, but he still took every chance he got to observe him quiet and still simply because he liked to look at him.

He liked to see the pale, smooth skin that only he was allowed to touch, to trace his eyes over the lips he still enjoyed kissing—frequently. Over the form that he still found beautiful. He liked most of all in these moments—if only because his true favorite feature of his lover was hidden from view behind white eyelids—the hair that was no longer dyed red but was its natural colorless state that appeared white, long enough now to fall to his shoulders. He had not made it a secret that he preferred it that way and that was likely the only reason Jack had gone so long without dying it, but he knew it was only a matter of time before he would again. His hair made him stand out in a way he didn’t like, and unlike Chase Jack had not isolated himself from the world.

He was, in fact, now one of the foremost experts in A.I. technology, holding several doctorates in various fields of and relating to robotics—a long list of which Chase didn’t care to remember when it was just the two of them. He had more robots running around his citadel than he had ever anticipated now. Even one was more than he’d ever wanted, but he was… growing used to them, and out of respect for him Jack had kept the protocals for every robot to menial tasks like cleaning. And he had to admit, it was nice to have a robot that only needed to plug itself in and recharge every once in awhile doing the cleaning. It freed up his warriors and other servants for other tasks he could assign them, or even just allowed them more time to rest and relax, which kept them happier and more willing to serve him.

One of the menial tasks he did not allow a robot to do, however, was alert him that it was time to return to his day-to-day affairs when his midday rest was over. Jack thought it was just because he didn’t like the robots, but he had other reasons. His lover’s robots, for example, wouldn’t stand quietly at the corner of the pagoda for thirty minutes, allowing him extra time to watch Jack sleep.

His warrior shifted very slightly, just enough for him to notice. It was a reminder that although he had isolated himself from the world, he did still have responsibilities to attend to. He had investments to check on, business partners to keep an eye on, people who owed him favors to send reminders to—an anniversary date to prepare for. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t simply watch Jack sleep for the rest of the day.

He conceded defeat, pushing himself up with one hand—and stopping short when he realized Jack had fallen asleep on the sleeve of his robe. He hadn’t realized before because his sleeves were wide, wide enough that Jack wasn’t on his arm, merely next to it. He sighed quietly, elongating the nail on his pointer finger into a wicked-sharp point. He raised his hand, balancing himself somewhat awkwardly, and for a moment rested the tip of his nail against the paleness of Jack’s throat.

It would be so easy to do. He could end Jack’s life with a simple flick of his finger. If he had found himself in this position with anyone else, he would have with no hesitation… but he had no desire to end Jack’s life. Just the opposite. The mere contemplation of it made his stomach clench and his chest hurt. He carefully pulled his nail away from his lover’s throat, taking extra care to not even accidentally nick him, and lifted it to where his sleeve met the rest of his robe. The fabric yielded to him like butter, separating quickly and cleanly so that his sleeve fluttered back down to the daybed, still trapped beneath Jack while he was free to stand.

He did so, turning back to look at him one last time before he had to return to his duties. Jack sighed in his sleep, turning and reaching for where he had been. He leaned down, catching the seeking hand in his own, wrapping his fingers around it gently. He pressed his lips against Jack’s forehead, his other hand coming up to lightly caress his cheek.

“Sleep well, wǒ de ài,” he murmured, then tore himself away, forcing himself to take step after step away from him. He didn’t have to hear the small, distressed whine to know Jack was awake just enough to hear him and know he was leaving him to sleep alone. He also knew Jack understood exactly what he’d just said despite not knowing Chinese.

Jack was a smart young man. The first few times he’d said it he didn’t know, but he had the world of technology at his fingertips and it didn’t take him long to have one of his robots discreetly translate it for him. Chase had known from the beginning that he would do it eventually, which was why he’d never bothered to translate it for him even after he’d become truly comfortable saying it.

He didn’t quite know how he had come to be in this position, the position of being totally and irrevocably in love with Jack Spicer, but he knew he could spend the rest of eternity with him at his side and it would never be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> "Wǒ de ài" is "my love" in Mandarin Chinese.
> 
> This little oneshot was inspired by a story about an ancient Chinese emperor who, upon finding his male lover asleep on the sleeve of his robe after being woken to attend to something, chose to cut off his sleeve rather than wake his lover. This story is known as The Passion of the Cut Sleeve, which has become a euphemism for gay relationships in China. My original intent had been to title this The Passion of the Cut Sleeve, but when I read up on the history of the emperor in question I found him to be nothing like Chase--he was basically a pushover who caused a lot of problems by catering to his lover and domineering grandmother--so I decided to title it something else.
> 
> Chase's habitual midday rest was inspired by the fact that pretty much all of modern China shuts down between noon and two (which ends up being more like two-thirty) to eat lunch and take a nap. I'm an American living in China as a foreign English teacher and heaven-forbid I need something done between noon and two. Something goes wrong in my apartment that I need maintenance to fix at eleven-thirty in the morning? I gotta deal with it, because by the time maintenance will get to my apartment it'll be after noon and they don't care if there's water all over my floor or my electricity is out while it's cold outside, that nap time is essential. ESSENTIAL. They freak out if they don't get it.
> 
> Jack being on the spectrum was unplanned. The characters that I like to play with, mine or not, tend to run away with things a lot, and this time it was Chase who decided Jack was autistic. I did some quick and very minimal research to establish whether the character traits I list that Jack displays in the show could in fact be symptoms of autism, but didn't go any further than that because this oneshot was intended to be solely in Chase's pov entirely while Jack was asleep, and because at this point in their relationship Chase honestly doesn't give a damn that Jack is on the spectrum. It's just another aspect of his personality, one that does demand a bit more patience than he would have to give otherwise, but is otherwise an inconsequential fact. I hope that is not an offensive stance to have him take, and that what little I have written about autism is in no way offensive. Please let me know if it is.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this, short though it is.  
> bailong05


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